Rostov-on-Don, Russia, December 15, 2020
Photo: u-f.ru
A petition has appeared online for citizens of Rostov-on-Don to vote for authorities to officially consider replacing a monument to Vladimir Lenin on the central city square with a monument to the Royal Martyr Tsar Nicholas II.
The petition, published on the Active Rostovite site of the Rostov-on-Don city administration, also calls for the historical names to be restored to all city streets.
The initiative was published on December 11, and has received considerable attention in the local media.
“In order to restore historical justice, I propose to return the pre-revolutionary names to all city streets existing today; to rename Lenin Street and Square to Emperor Nicholas II; to remove the monument to Lenin from the square and replace it with a monument to the most august family of the last Russian emperor, which was martyred by order of the God-fighting leaders,” the petition reads.
Voting on the site will continue for 3 months. If the initiative finds the support of 500 citizens, it will be considered by the authorities. However, at the time of writing, there are 77 votes against the initiative, and only 44 in favor. Comments left by visitors to the site show that, unfortunately, many people still the soviet propaganda about Tsar Nicholas.
The Rostov-on-Don petition was perhaps inspired by the city of Tarusa in the Kaluga Province, where in October the city council accepted the proposal of the regional administration to rename 16 streets, replacing the ideological soviet names with their historical, pre-revolutionary names.
According to the editors of the site Russian Line, it is unlikely that the Rostov-on-Don administration will decide to change street names and replace the monument, “but just the fact that the Russian people have recently begun to actively raise this question speaks for itself.”
In May 2018, a monument to Lenin in Novoselskoe, Odessa Province, Ukraine, was replaced with a monument to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker.
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